THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THIS BLOG IS TO SHARE WITH THE READER ISSUES OF HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE FROM A PROGRESSIVE PERSPECTIVE.
ORDER OF MOST READERS OF THIS BLOG: USA, RUSSIA, FRANCE, UNITED KINGDOM, GERMANY, UKRAINE,CANADA, INDIA,and CHINA.

Sunday, 16 November 2014

On 16 November 2014, the G-20 leaders issued a final report from Brisbane
Australia. After some disagreements about what topics the conference must
include besides economic ones, and after bitterly criticizing Russia as one
would expect from a US-EU dominated group, the G-20 reached a number of
conclusions that sound well enough on paper. Turkish Prime minister Ahmet
Davutoglu caused a bit of stir when he argued there was an absence of
discussion on essential political matters interconnected with the world economy.
He also noted that 20 nations essentially decide the fate all of the rest
without consultation, implying the rich decide the fate of the poor.

The core group within G-20 is made up of the G-7 that prevails in its views
and for that reason the meeting is always a success for the richest nations.
Judging the G-20 conference from the broader perspective of the middle class,
working class and peasant interests round the world, G-20 has very little to
offer. No matter what the final wording about G-20 goals, the purpose is never
to discuss horizontal economic development geared to benefit the broadest
possible segments of the world’s population across the globe, but vertical economic
growth intended to help keep capital concentrated in the strongest banks and
corporations. Because they are “too big to fail”, the strongest banks and corporations,
most of them sheltering money in various tax havens like Luxemburg, are the
real winner of the meeting in Brisbane, just as they have been the winners of
all meetings in the last eight years.

While everything from food security to global warming have been core
issues, the G-20 want to make certain that these are addressed within the
context of neoliberal policies and continued globalization. Before
I analyze the goals of the G-20 it is important to have an overview of the
group’s short history and its purpose for existing. Under the leadership of
German finance minister Hans Eichel, in 1999 the idea was born to have
consultation of the world’s 20 richest nations. The G-20 represents 87% of the
world’s wealth, 78% of the world’s trade, and two-thirds of the world’s
population.

The first meeting took place in 2008 amid the US-based
recession where finance ministers and central bankers were as committed to
neoliberalism and anti-Keynesianism as they were in Brisbane. The G-20 always
focuses on global governance under a neoliberal model of economic integration
that the richest nations pursue with the help of various international
organizations like the IMF, OECD, etc. In so far as the impact on the banks and
the corporate world which governments of the richest nations want to maintain
healthy, G-20 is just another international coordination-management mechanism
to reinforce the neoliberal model under globalization.

The goal is never to
address issues pertaining to human rights in all countries and not just the ones
the US targets for its own political reasons. There is not much about social
and economic inequality and social justice in general because these issues
clash with the neoliberal model that the IMF, World Bank, OECD and other
international organizations espouse. Nor is there much concern about the question
of democratizing society because as long as there is a healthy banking and
corporate sector. Political and social issues are only significant to the G-20
if they impact the banks and corporations and/or the political system that
helps to sustain them for the duration. In other words, the G-20 representatives
confer to make sure that governments continue to support the corporate welfare
state.

It seems that the G-20 have swept under the carpet the underlying causes
for the last recession that started toward the end of 2007 in New York (Lehman
Brothers) and spread to the rest of the world. Just a few years ago, the US and
EU leaders were crying out for structural reforms that would not permit a
repeat of the decadent and corrupt banking-insurance-investment sector crisis
that took down with it the world economy, put enormous downward pressure on
middle class and working class living standards and raised unemployment to
double-digit levels in much of the Western World.

It is indeed rare in 2014 to hear elected officials speak about structural
reforms that would place greater state regulation and controls over a
neoliberal model that the political and financial elites do not question. Brisbane
did raise the issue of everyone paying taxes and trying to fight corruption,
but this was necessary to be addressed so people continue having faith in the
system that brought us the banking crisis. Against the background of a revived
banking and corporate sector, the talk now is how to proceed with even greater
vertical growth that concentrates wealth because capital concentration that
Keynes once argued was the root cause of the problem the neoliberals now see as
the panacea.

Even after the latest revelations involving corporations and individuals
sheltering money in Luxemburg and other places with offshore accounts so they
would avoid paying taxes in their own countries, the EU remains silent. This is
because EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is also the prime minister
of Luxemburg. How can the ordinary person have faith in capitalism and
democracy where the inexorable link between the political class and the
economic elites converge and they reinforce each other so they can maintain a
system catering to the interests of the rich through legal and illegal
practices? What then is the G-20 but an international system of managing wealth
for the richest countries and richest people in the world?

The Bretton Woods system that the US-led coalition established in 1944 with
the creation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank was to help
manage the world economy to the extent possible through fiscal, monetary, trade
and investment policies. Although the capitalist system has built-in cycles of
expansion and contraction owing to market saturation and concentration of
capital, the state is able to do some things to help manage the “free
enterprise” system by injecting more liquidity, easing on taxes of the mass
consumers and collecting higher taxes from the wealthy, providing public
spending as a stimulus to growth to fill the gap in private investment.

Besides the issues mentioned above, there are even larger ones that include
international coordination on energy and environmental policy, creditor countries
providing funds to debtor nations to stimulate growth, and limiting public and
private debt in the international economy when inflation goes out of control
while pouring more credit when there is contraction leading to deflationary
conditions and high unemployment. In all cases the ultimate goal is not just
saving the capitalist system under corporate welfare, but also saving it while
maintaining an elected political regime in which the masses have confidence and
do not question to the degree of demanding the end of capitalism as a socially
unjust system.

The Keynesian model of the New Deal in the 1930s and other models of
quasi-statism since then managed to accomplish the goal with some degree of
success. However, all of this came to an end when the UK and US in the 1980s
decided to abandon the Keynesian model and embrace the neoliberal model that
would essentially begin to chip away at the social safety net different
governments had built up for decades. It is not that world political leaders,
central bankers and analysts who take the time to study the issues do not know
about the shrinking middle class in the West, about high unemployment and high
structural underemployment especially in the EU. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew
has spoken of an EU lost decade, as have the International Labor Organization,
the OECD, and even the IMF. Although they agree about the “lost decade” and
high youth unemployment, they have not and will not deviate from neoliberal
orthodoxy and corporate welfare capitalism that creates and perpetuates these
conditions.

The G-20 in Australia announced that the first conclusion they reached was
to work toward higher living standards and lower unemployment. Clearly, this is
a lofty goal with which no one would argue against, but how to reach the goal
is the essential question. Recognizing that the global recovery is very slow,
the G-20 concluded that consumer demand is part of the problem. But it is
austerity policies that the IMF and the G-20 governments support which led to
the slashing of consumer demand because the goal was to strengthen currencies
and bring inflation under control. So what does the G-20 propose? Strengthening
international organizations that are fully committed to neoliberalism and
austerity; a solution that has proved it concentrates capital, raises unemployment,
and creates socioeconomic and political polarization.

Stressing that debt-to-GDP ratio must be sustainable the G-20 agreed that a
more flexible fiscal policy is in order to address deflationary pressures.
However, this means something different for every country - Japan is at 200% debt-to-GDP
ratio and Portugal at 80%, but it is Portugal that must suffer fiscal restraints
and be placed under IMF austerity, not Japan that has a reserve currency and
enjoys monetary and fiscal sovereignty. Portugal along with the rest of the
Southern European countries are in essence monetary and fiscal colonies of
Germany determining policy across the board for them. When the G-20 comes along
and proposes a cookie-cutter solution that pertains to all countries from the
richest to the poorest, the conclusion is that such a solution could not
possibly best serve both with different abilities and needs.

Another goal of the G-20 is to raise the GDP of its member nations
collectively by 2% in the next four years. A 2% growth rate may be just great
for North America, Australia, Japan and northwest Europe. However, 2% hardly
addresses problems for the rest of the world coming out of a deep recession and
need growth rates above 5% to reduce unemployment and raise living standards
that have been dropping in the last six years. One could argue that $2 trillion
is a huge figure in GDP growth by 2018, until we realize the world GDP is about
$73 trillion. The 2% solution was deliberately modest because the neoliberals
want to maintain a regime of monetarism that keeps inflation low, unemployment
high and wages low.

A commitment to infrastructural development is another goal of the G-20.
This is indeed a positive step toward stimulating jobs growth. However, handing
out out contracts in many G-20 countries simply link corrupt politicians to
corrupt contractors that accounts for a clientist system. Advocating
privatization, neoliberals overlook the reality of how the economic theory
actually works in practice and what narrow interests it serves, arguing that it
is best for all of society. As a political phenomenon, clientism in G-20 and
other countries tends to retard economic growth and development because funds
do not go for their intended purpose, thus we have the phenomenon of parasitic
capitalism.

Foreign investment is another G-20 goal that does not really work in
practice as it does in theory. For example, investing in Turkey is hardly the
same as investing in Australia where everything from the bureaucracy to labor
and environmental laws are very different. It is one thing to state that trade
and investment will deliver quality jobs, and another to realize that such jobs
differ substantially from one G20 country to the other, and especially in
developing nations. Along the same lines of a gap between rhetoric and reality,
G-20 stated that they wish to reduce “the
gap in participation rates between men and women in our countries by 25 per
cent by 2025, taking into account national circumstances, to bring more than
100 million women into the labour force, significantly increase global growth
and reduce poverty and inequality.”

Who in the world would be against such a goal? However, this is not very
different from the UN goal to reduce world poverty in a set timeframe. This is
just more lofty rhetoric that actual policies the G-20 advocate cannot possibly
realize. In short, the contradiction of corporations chasing cheap labor
invariably found in women in many countries is a reality of the capitalist
economy and unlikely to change very much at all with rhetoric. That the G20
mention it as a problem simply confirms the reality of inequality the
marketplace creates. The same holds true for youth unemployment that G-20
agreed to reduce. If neoliberal policies are the ones creating youth
unemployment in the first place, how can the root cause to the problem be the solution?
Considering the G-20 refuse to change these policies, I fail to see how there
can be a radical reduction of youth unemployment no matter how much progress
there is in science and technology.

With all of the emphasis on creating jobs and higher living standards one
would think the G-20 conference was convened by governments interested in
social justice. It is well known to all of these governments that small and mid-sized
businesses create most jobs in an economy. It is true that the definition of
small and mid-sized business is very different in the US than it is in South
Africa, but the model is the same.

Under globalization, the policies of neoliberalism
and capital concentration destroy small and mid-sized businesses. Therefore, we
are left with higher unemployment and structural underemployment, wider rich-poor
gap because of the shrinking middle class and people becoming apathetic about
their institutions because they represent the rich. The G-20 conferences are
intended to strengthen a system of geographic and social inequality on a world
scale. Toward this goal they are a success. However, leaving behind a society
where more and more people feel that the state is violating the social contract
intended for the welfare of all will entail social unrest and this would mean
that elected governments will be using more coercive measures not very
different from those of authoritarian regimes.

Saturday, 15 November 2014

If one reads, watches on TV, or listens on
radio what the Western media produces the impression is that Russia poses a
threat to regional and global security owing to its intervention in the Ukraine and Syria, but also because it is a nuclear power with a strong deterrent even after the downfall of the Warsaw Pact. Many analysts in the West and
its allies from Australia to Saudi Arabia and Israel argue that Russia poses a
threat because it possesses nuclear weapons and it has a large conventional force,
although it is but a tiny fraction of what the US and NATO possess and it spends a tiny fraction of its GDP of what the US and its NATO partners spend on defense.

Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko has gone so
far as to argue that Russia is not just a threat to global security but a
terrorist state. After all, Russia annexed the Crimea, continues to support the
separatist rebels inside the eastern provinces of Ukraine, and refuses to
accept Ukraine’s economic, political, and military integration into the Western
zone of influence. Moreover, Russia refuses to renounce its historic role of backing Syria, in cooperation with Iran, making it seem much more menacing militarily than Israel and Saudi Arabia working with the US and NATO to secure Syria as a Western satellite.

According to Russians living in London, there
has been a cultural backlash because the majority population has reverted to
Cold War days when Westerners loved to hate Russians. In other words, it is not
merely the government of President Putin on target for Western hatred but the
entire nation. If one observes what comes out of right wing media in
English-speaking countries, things are not very different than in London.
Russia is the nation to hate because it poses a global security threat, no
questions asked.There are of course those who argue that much of the world ridicules US-Western propaganda against Russia because the military interventionist actions of the West and their devastating consequences speak for themselves as to which side is destabilizing the world.

Needless to point out, Russia sees the US and
NATO as global security threats. As the only nation on earth ever to use nuclear
weapons, and the only nation on earth perpetually involved in
militaristic interventions around the world, the US defense budget and ceaseless efforts for military solutions in crises instead of political ones are a source of concern to skeptics about US and the West labeling Russia a global security threat. A concerted US-led effort to weaken Russia which uses
energy as a political leverage combined with sanctions so that the US would then fill the trade gap Russia leaves is indicative of soft-power pressure as part of a larger containment policy. Furthermore, the
close relationship Moscow has had with Iran, Syria and China is something that
bothers the US and many of its allies because it means that the effort to
weaken it and reduce to a regional power without much influence has not worked. Hardly anyone who follows the money, weapons, logistical and diplomatic trail behind the jihadists in Syria and Iraq as well as in Yemen is not aware that the West and the Gulf States with Saudi Arabia in charge have been the source of instability.

Of all the hype about Vladimir Putin and his cult of personality, he is hardly stronger than the capabilities of Russia and her allies can carry him.
Over-reaching for the sake of fomenting instability is not a Putin characteristic, while defensive moves are. However, the US and EU governments and Western media have
created a mass hysteria directed toward Russia in order to build up the “monstrous threat” that the Russian bear
of the Soviet era represents once again after a period of hibernation during the 1990s and early
2000s when Russia was too weak to assert its national sovereignty and regional spheres of influence.

With the chaos in the Middle East where
the US became involved only to create much bigger
problems than it proclaimed it wished to solve, the Ukrainian and Syrian crisis looks even
worse than it really is for the US and EU, only because of deliberate policy to create more instability. When Obama had no choice but
to work with Iran at some level in order to reach a deal on the nuclear development program, and to water down his commitment to remove
Assad from power, it was only out of a realization that a military solution would have been a disaster for all parties concerned. Considering that historically Turkey has been playing all sides, including
the US and Saudi Arabia that had been providing financing for the rebels in
Syria, but also looking to Irn and Russia as leverage, the best outcome that the West can achieve is more instability, while blaming Russia as a global security threat.

Russia has indeed displayed its predisposition
toward military resolution to the crises over Ukraine and Syria, which in the
view of Moscow are crises between Russia and the West, the latter which wishes to impose a
strict containment policy on Russia. Moscow has made it clear that
the West refuses to permit Russia a sphere of influence that the Kremlin regards
historically rightfully theirs just as the US views the Western Hemisphere its domain.While there are constant reports of
Russian military exercises everywhere from the Mediterranean and Baltic to the
border of the Ukraine, exactly what do these military exercises
mean, other than to send a symbolic message? Moreover, it is just as true that NATO holds countless military exercises all around the Russian territories, but invoke a "right" to do so, while denying the right of Russians to conduct such exercises.

It is true that Russia has no qualms moving
militarily when it comes to its own borders, but only if it faces a threat to
what it defines as “national security” zone. Let us keep in mind that Russia
from Czar Peter the Great until the present has always had a policy of
“continental imperialism” (expansion within Eurasia) in comparison with
European imperialism that was always “extra-continental” involving territories
in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Moscow is acting largely
out of a defensive posture because Putin feels that the US and EU have been ganging
up on Russia, encircling it to contain it and not permitting a zone of
influence that Moscow regards as its historical right. In the Kremlin's estimation, the Western attempt to integrate
Ukraine in the Western zone of influence would be comparable to Russia trying
to integrate Mexico into the Russian zone of influence.

Having the experienced of 20th century wars, Germany and France are not
interested in a conflict with Russia, especially since they realize
that sanctions have backfired and Russia’s decision to float its currency and strengthen ties with China, while the US has been using sanctions to capture market share in Western and Eastern Europe. Having spent billions defending the rubble, Russia opted for
a floating currency, thus ending the euro-dollar pegged currency. This move
forced all currencies on a downward path, but placed special burdens on Europe
and especially on Germany that relies heavily on Russia for energy and as an
export-import market. Considering that
EU is faced with a slow-growth economy, and considering that
major businesses including European defense industry, refuse the take the fall
because the US wants sanctions on Russia partly to capture market share, EU governments feel the squeeze from
their own business community.

Russia will have a competitive advantage
because of the floating currency decision which comes at a time that EU economy is undergoing enormous global competition. Putin has in effect
neutralized Germany and France forcing them to re-examine their pro-US aggressive policies. The risk/benefit ratio for
France and Germany is to determine how far they can go along with US policy
before striking out on their own and proposing some kind of solution over
Ukraine and Syria that both Moscow and Washington can live with. It is true that there are Russian nationalists with
dreams of a large Russian empire, but even the most delusional nationalists
have the sense to realize EU means NATO.Russia is only interested in recovering a
part of its lost glory from the past, but within reason and that means within
Eurasia, and not far beyond it. After all, there is economic expansionist China to consider. It is
interesting that Western politicians and analysts in the media play up this
card of making Russia a much more aggressive power than it really is simply
because they are interested in strengthening their own defense budgets, but also because the other real global power, namely China, is too strong to confront.

What a
better way to convince public opinion to accept more military spending, as the
US insists must take place, than to present Russia as an aggressor whose long
term goals are threatening global security. The scenarios are simply absurd and
serve only the Western defense industry, as well as governments shifting the public’s
attention away from domestic issues like unemployment and low living standards
for workers and the middle class, and massive cuts in social welfare as neoliberal policies strengthen the corporate welfare state. For now, there seems to be no easy answer and
the stalemate will continue. Nothing so far seems to satisfy Moscow, Kiev and
Washington as far as a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, but things
can change in a few weeks or a few months. As a result
of the lingering cat-and-mouse games between Moscow and Washington, Western militarist propagandists want escalation toward conventional war that would then invite NATO intervention on
a limited basis. This would in turn invite China to side with Russia and then we
are faced with a very serious scenario for WWIII. I do not want to dismiss this absurd scenario because defense industries and billionaire militarists support it; after all, anything is possible when no government is willing to make concessions
at the negotiating table and the West seems to need, indeed crave an enemy as a catalyst of unifying their people behind the status quo.

However, even the most hard-headed
Western ideologues, militarist enthusiasts and defense industry profiteers are driven at least in part by how they define a greater
sense of national responsibility and continue to retain some modicum of their
rational faculties; one must assume they do not want nuclear holocaust. Cold War diplomacy meant massive profits for the defense-related industries and it is not about to change. However, as the US and the West want the world to focus on Moscow as a global security threat, China may
play a larger role in the world balance of power than people are willing to acknowledge. China wants a tamed Russia but strong enough to keep the West out of Eurasia. China also wants a less
adventurist US trying to destabilize various regions around the world where
China needs to expand its trade and investments. Improvement between Russia and EU are
inevitable because of geography and common economic interests, but also because the reality of the Chinese superpower will eventually sink in.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

In the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in Beijing in November 2014 has proved that
China is evolving into a power broker between US and Russia. Focusing primarily
on trade, monetary, and other macroeconomic issues, the Chinese government has
been trying to ameliorate relations with the US by striking a deal on tariffs
in technology as well as other trade issues, including the larger one of
forging greater free trade by supporting the Free Trade Area of the
Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). China has even gone the extra mile to ameliorate
relations with its rival Japan, realizing that it has no choice but to
cooperate otherwise there is a net loss in terms of both economic and
geopolitical influence in Asia with the US benefiting from the weakening of
these two neighbors.

China’s efforts to forge greater global
stability using economic issues as catalyst are taking place against the military-solutions
oriented policy that the US has been pursuing toward Russia over the Ukraine
crisis. Oddly enough, China is using the APEC summit to deflect attention away from
that crisis and its modalities and toward a diplomacy based on macroeconomic
issues. Clearly, the rate of Chinese growth has slowed, its “shadow banking”
may be creating greater uncertainty than officials wish to admit, its currency
may not be as solid as the regime wishes, and its efforts to help stabilize
Russia against US-EU sanctions have been costly for now, though with longer
term benefits.

For its part, China wants
regional and international economic integration because it is now confident of
its global economic position emerging as the most promising for the 21st
century. In an interview with a Chinese news service, Obama had to deny that US
policy toward China is based on containment at all levels from economic to
political and military. Without commenting on the US containment policy,
Beijing has stressed that the world economy is not stable and it needs further
efforts through greater regional and global integration.

It is incredibly odd that
the US started as the cheerleader of globalization under the guise of the New
World Order a generation ago, but it is now China taking that position and the
US much more guarded. Realizing that smaller
nations are cautious when larger ones propose models of economic integration,
China has tried to reassure the world that it is not after creating a “patron-client”
integration model, that is one based on NAFTA where Mexico is the client state
and US the patron deriving most of the benefits; or Germany using its creditor
status to dominate the debtor nations in the Southern and Eastern periphery of
Europe. "China does not want to control or steal from anyone, nor does it
want to marginalize any country… It wants to totally change the old way of
winner-takes-all mentality."

The reassuring rhetoric
aside, China is aiming to become the world’s number one economic power, at
least for now. After signing free trade agreements with South Korea and Japan,
it is now scheduled to do the same with Australia. However, the monetary policy
of China is more tightly controlled by the quasi-statist regime than the
market-pegged currencies of its trading partners, thus giving China a distinct competitive
advantage. However, because so many multinational corporations are now
operating out of China, the benefits are as much for them making greater
profits owing to low production costs as they are for the Chinese economy and
government. .

Emphasizing that Beijing
wants both economic and political harmony between nations, without using uneven
terms of trade to take advantage of the weaker ones, China has been presenting
itself as a broker of stability and harmony rather than a power hungry nation
trying to impose its hegemony. The government in Beijing even goes as far as
assuring people around the world that it wants social harmony and social
justice, not exploitation that many smaller nations fear from the stronger
ones. This is an obvious reference to the US and northwest European countries
that have been pursuing models of integration aimed at hegemony. These days when all the
focus of the US is on reviving the old Cold War, resorting to unilateral
military solutions and covert operations to destabilize as many of its foes
around the world as possible, China comes along trying to make its mark on the
world scene through global economic integration that Beijing deems catalytic to
eventually becoming the world’s dominant power.

While US Republican
congressmen and advocates of militarism are arguing over the types of military
solutions for various regional crises around the world, the Chinese are working
hard to present themselves as the catalysts to global stability and harmony. Clearly,
their actions are hardly reveals anything approximating altruism as they wish
to imply. However, the issue here is what model of world development and stability
best serves the interest of nations, the one that the US has been projecting or
the one that China is presenting?

Sunday, 9 November 2014

The crisis
over Ukraine that stated in autumn 2013 and continued throughout 2014 with
Russia depriving Ukraine of the Crimea – annexation, public referendum the
result is the same – has caused many war mongers, nationalist and leftist
critics of US-NATO policy, and other peddlers of crisis to warn of an impending
WWIII. Nothing is impossible, but the idea that the US-NATO forces would
intervene directly with boots on the ground to fight Russia and that would in
turn unleash a global war with the possibility of nuclear weapons used sounds
to me like science fiction. This does not mean that a conventional war confined
to certain areas within Ukraine is out of the question, but to go from this to a
global war scenario is to test the imagination of all except warmongers and
peddlers of crisis.

I
understand why a number of interest groups would welcome a conflict over
Ukraine that would result in WWIII. It is indeed possible a combination of
regional conflicts converges and blows up into a larger war that is difficult
to contain despite rules of engagement on all sides. It is also possible that
out of a mistake by someone in the military chain of command goes out of
control and we have a chain reaction that follows. Here are some scenarios.

First,
there are those in the defense industry in the US, Europe and Israel that stand
to make money just by the talk of a war, let alone an actual conflict. The more
peddlers of WWIII talk about this, the more cautious governments would become
and purchase more arms. After all, the theory is that wars help to stimulate
the economy and many actually believe this is the case as though the bills for
the war never come due for the taxpayers.

Second,
there are the ideologues in political circles and private sector that want a
conflict between East and West because “hot war” never took place during the
Cold War. Now that the Cold War is over and the US prevailed over its rival and
remains the world’ sole superpower, why not teach Russia a lesson and put it in
its place, while also sending a strong message to China and all other potential
rivals great and small?

Third,
there are the nationalists in Ukraine and Russia that want to see this through
to the end not through a political solution but a military conflict because
that is how things are settled in absolute terms instead of relative terms
through diplomacy. Ukraine itself could push matters to the point of no return.

Fourth,
there are Europeans who detest Russia for having so much leverage over them
because it supplies energy to Europe. This energy dependence relationship can
be settled once and for all through a conflict with Russia using Ukraine as the
pretext. Dealing a definite blow to Russia would humble it into submission at
least; many hope so.

Fifth,
there are Russians who resent the West for imposing very painful sanctions at a
time of economic and financial problems, partly because of low energy prices.
The sanctions are by themselves a form of war, so why not have it out with the
US-NATO forces, threatening Europe with smaller tactical nuclear weapons that
would cause enormous damage for decades. Russian nationalists and militarists already
feel humiliated by the West, so what does it matter that they go the next step
toward a military confrontation.

Sixth, the media in the West has been obsessed
with the prospect of a global war with Russia, peddling it almost on a daily
basis. Arguing that Russia wants a war, the Western media rarely focuses on
exactly what is the national interest of the US in the Ukraine and why can the
crisis not be resolved through diplomacy? The media obsession is that Russia is
on the offensive, when all statements from Moscow, as well as its actions
indicate Moscow is on the defensive and acting out of fear from a position of
weakness. Nevertheless, US magazines portray Putin as the world’s most powerful
leader, thus projecting an image of a Russian aggressor. In fact, Russia is
running scared to China, India, Iran, the former Soviet republics and just
about anyone that would forge ties with it to deter what it sees as the US-NATO
aggression over Ukraine.

Seventh,
the Republican victory in the November election of 2014 paves the way for more
defense spending and the desire of the militarists who have been crying out for
massive re-militarization and greater reliance on unilateral solutions with
reliance on the military. In short, the threat of a conflict with Russia over
Ukraine provides the excuse militarists need to justify pouring more money to
DoD. Even if nothing happens over Ukraine, the goal is accomplished.

Eighth,
there are regional powers that want a conflict between Russia and the West
because they see that in such a conflict they would benefit. Turkey is one such
power, but so are the Baltic states as well as some among the former Soviet
republics, that may include Kazakhstan. Smaller powers lining up behind larger
powers to divide the spoils of war the day after is nothing new when there is a
prospect for a wider conflict.

Ninth, a
war between Russia and the West, which would in reality mean Russia and
whatever allies it can line up – with China as the wild card - against NATO,
would actually revitalize NATO and propel the US into the undisputed number one
global status that would send a strong message to Beijing and US allies as well.
NATO revitalization is the way to secure greater US influence because in the
absence of an enemy in Moscow, why is NATO really needed?

Tenth,
there are those who really do not want WWII, but fear it would take place if
the deadlock between Russia and the US continues. This group of people, mostly
intellectuals and some politicians, is simply trying to alert the public that
no one should be surprised if things get out of hand and we go from small
confrontations into a full blown global war.

The above
are the reasons that many are peddling war or at least warning about war
between Russia and the West. What are the reasons of the very low prospect of
WWIII?

First,
Russia has nuclear weapons and those are made to be used one as a deterrent,
not for combat. During the 1980s, the Reagan administration taught us that it
is possible to have nuclear war on a limited basis as though it is no different
than conventional war, as long as it does not take place on US soil. If even a
single nuclear weapons is used no matter how limited its impact, the genie is
out of the bottle and mass destruction awaits the planet. This is something
that Washington and Moscow know, but more importantly, the European would never
permit the US to go this far because they know Europe will be the victim.

Second,
exactly what is Ukraine worth geopolitically and economically that the US would
risk war with Europe as the ultimate victim to pay the price? Even if the war
last a few days, it would cause such grave economic and political instability
that regimes may collapse and social uprisings would ensue in a number of EU
countries.

Third,
China is the wild card that has really no choice but to support Russia because
of US refusal to negotiate a solution on the Ukraine issue, at least as far as
Beijing is concerned. Not that China is blind to Putin’s megalomania, and of
Russia’s possible designs to expand their sphere of influence in all of the
former Soviet republics. But what does China gain by having the US-NATO
alliance strengthened through a war with Russia?

Fourth, does
American and EU public opinion really favor WWIII over the Ukraine? According
to US poll only 50% of Americans believe the US is headed back toward another
Cold War, and most of those still see Russia from the prism of the old Cold
War. If the majority did not have the stomach for Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts
that ended in disaster for the countries invaded and the US, why would they
back WWIII over Ukraine that they see as a European affair?

Fifth, despite all the defensive noise Putin
has made about war, would Russia risk everything for Ukraine, considering it
already has the Crimea? What exactly would it gain vs. lose?

Sixth,
would not a Russia-West war mean instability in other parts of the world where
the US and its allies have vital interests? For example, how would Brazil,
Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American republics react to
American militarism, as they see it? I doubt the US would secure their support
as it did in WWII. How would African countries and a number of Muslim countries
react? Is this worth the risk?

I believe
that policymakers in Washington, assisted by very able analysts, know
everything I have outlined above and would think twice before taking the
ultimate act of recklessness. One could argue that Truman dropped the bomb when
Oppenheimer had doubts about its use; that Johnson escalated the Vietnam War
when his own advisors explained it was really over; that Bush went to Iraq even
after Powell explained it would be very difficult to achieve publicly stated
goals. In other words, decisions are not always made rationally, and there is
nothing to suggest Russia may not make a unilateral move that so outrages
Washington that it decides to risk the world, not just US interests. All of
these are possible, but very highly unlikely as the peddlers of crisis and
leftist critics are warning.

"A
gripping, passion-filled, and suspenseful tale of love, betrayal,
political and religious intrigue, this novel entices the reader’s
senses and intellect beyond conventions. Slaves to Gods and Demons
takes the reader through a roller coaster enthralling journey of
personal trials and triumphs of a family emerging vanquished and
destitute after World War II.

Narrated by a young boy, Morfeos, modeled after the Greco-Roman pagan
deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

Striving for purpose amid life’s absurdities after the destruction of
western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."